You needed an alchemist.
Alchemists could “freeze” the magic in blood, refining and strengthening it until they found themselves in possession of potions, charms, and powders capable of lending that initial magic to someone else. With a good enough alchemist on your side, you no longer needed a blood-worker: all the magic of Faerie could be at your fingertips for as long as you wanted it to be. And my blood held the power to rewrite a person’s heritage.
Not enough to make humans out of purebloods or vice-versa, but enough to weaken changelings, turn them human or fae on your whim; enough to strengthen or resolve the confusion that already existed in a mixed-blood’s veins. Both changeling madness and the instability that sometimes came for those with exceedingly mixed heritages were functions of the blood. With fae, you’re not dealing with issues of race; you’re dealing with issues of species, completely dissimilar creatures that could, thanks to magic, somehow interbreed. Children of Maeve reproducing with children of Titania wasn’t like apples mixing with oranges—it was more like apples mixing with cheese graters, or rainbows with hardware stores.
Magic was enough to make the way Faerie worked possible, but magic couldn’t necessarily make it functional. Changeling madness was proof of that. Mixed-bloods had just as many issues—more, in my experience—but we didn’t talk about them as much, because they were still pure fae, and that made it a politically sensitive subject. Give King Rhys and his nameless mistress access to my blood, and they could parlay it into control of Faerie. I meant that literally. Anyone with human heritage would be in danger of being turned mortal. Anyone who had made peace with the balance of their blood would be at risk of having that peace ripped away.
Much like I had ripped the false Queen’s peace away, such as it had been, when I had reached in and unraveled the delicate tapestry of her heritage. I still didn’t feel bad about that—she had brought it on herself, in the truest meaning of the phrase—but I was starting to feel bad about what it had revealed to her. She knew how to hurt us now. She knew how to hurt everyone.
“Oh, oak and ash,” I said, with a shake of my head. “We can’t let them have me.”
“Or May,” said Tybalt. “I dare say they would be able to do fascinating things with the blood of your lady Fetch, given that there’s nothing else like her in all of Faerie. Whether those things did them any good at all would doubtless matter little to May, after she had been exsanguinated for their pleasure.”
Across the path, Walther stood. I switched my attention to him. It was better than dwelling on Tybalt’s uncomfortable, if accurate, words. “What’s up?” I asked, loudly enough to be heard.
“The rose goblins here remember me, which is always nice,” said Walther. “I was starting to feel like a ghost.” He was still holding the big one against his chest. The others surged around his ankles, moving like a strange and landlocked tide. Some of them were stropping up against him, using the odd, hopping dolphin-like stance that Spike always used when it wanted to show affection without actually breaking my skin.
“That’s weird,” I said, trying to keep my tone neutral. “I’m used to people being a little better with the visual perception.”
Walther looked faintly uncomfortable. “I didn’t grow up the way people expected me to is all. Anyway: the rose goblins remember me, they’re not huge fans of the new management, and they’ll keep whatever we say secret from King Rhys. In exchange, they’d really like your rose goblin to come out and play. They don’t get to meet many cuttings from Luna.”
Cuttings . . . I blinked. “That’s right: rose goblins are cuttings from a Blodynbryd. Luna’s the only one I’ve ever met. Who did these come from?”
“Me,” said a light, pleasant voice, faintly accented with the echoes of Wales. Its owner followed it out of the trees a heartbeat later, stepping out onto the path and offering a dazzling smile in my direction. “Hello. It’s lovely to meet you.”
She was tall, slim, and facially so similar to Luna that I would have known them as sisters even if there’d been some other option. Her skin was a fascinating shade of silvery purple, and her hair was almost exactly the same shade at the root. It darkened as it fell down her back in a waterfall of curls, ending in a purple deep enough to seem virtually black. Her eyes were bright pink, the color of primroses, with a thin ring of pollen yellow around the irises.
“Um, hi,” I said. “You’re . . .”
“Blodynbryd, yes,” said the woman. “My name is Ceres. You would be?”
“I’m October Daye; this is Tybalt,” I said.
“A pleasure to meet you both,” she said. A smile suffused her face as she reached over to caress Walther’s arm. “Any who travel with my dear Waltrune are friends to me.”
Walther looked briefly panicked. The panic faded, replaced by profound embarrassment. “It’s ‘Walther’ these days, Aunt Ceres,” he said.
“Ah,” she said. “My apologies; it’s been so long since you bothered to visit that I’m afraid I’m not so well-informed as to what you wish to be called, or when, or by whom.” The look she leveled on him was pure aunt.
I couldn’t help myself. I burst out laughing. Both Walther and Ceres turned to look at me. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said. “You just really reminded me of Luna for a moment. But in a good way, honest.” I wasn’t sure how much gossip from the Mists had traveled this far up the coasts, and I didn’t want to start my association with the second Blodynbryd I’d ever met by implying that I disliked her.
Gossip is interesting. In the human world, thanks to cellphones and the Internet, a rumor can travel around the world in less time than it takes to check your facts. In Faerie, for all that we have people who can teleport or fly, it still takes a little longer—mostly because very few of us have figured out how to turn on our cable modems. It’ll probably change in the next decade or so, as more and more changelings start setting up data centers within their lieges’ knowes, but for right now, it was entirely possible that Ceres didn’t know about my fight with her sister.
Ceres smiled. “Mother’s youngest rose. I hear she’s back in her proper pruning these days? No longer twisting herself into topiary for the sake of appearances?”
“Yes,” I said. “She’s Blodynbryd again.”
“That’s good.” Ceres tilted her head to the side, frowning speculatively. “October . . . I know I’ve heard that name before.”
“It’s a month in the current calendar,” said Walther. His note was mild, and a little dry, like he wasn’t being helpful so much as seizing on an opportunity to be sarcastic. “Has been since the Romans got hold of the thing.”
“I keep abreast of current events, you naughty child,” said Ceres, shooting him a look before swinging her attention back to me. “You’re the one who killed my father, aren’t you?”
Oh, great: this again. Killing Blind Michael was something I didn’t regret in the slightest. It was also something I was going to be dealing with for the rest of my life, if the last several years had been any guide. “I did,” I said.
“Good.” Her nod was brief and firm. “He was a good man once, but that was so long ago that only the roses remember. Mother has been to visit me twice since he died. Twice, after centuries without more than a whisper on the wind! Our family owes you a debt that can never be repaid, no matter how long we may struggle to do exactly that. Thank you for what you have done for us. Truly.”
I blinked at her, nonplussed. Apparently, growing up surrounded by Firstborn didn’t instill the same dislike for saying “thank you.”
Ceres wasn’t done. She stooped to pick up one of the rose goblins that crowded the path, glanced in the direction of the distant castle, and said, “Come. I would sit with you. I would share tea and stories with my family’s savior, and with her friends.” She kissed the rose goblin’s head, making no effort to avoid the angle of its thorns. If I’d done that, I would have sliced my mouth open, but she barely seemed to notice. The goblin made a low purring sound. “As for you, my little spy, go tell the king I have found his wayward diplomats. Paint the picture of a woman greatly troubled, overcome with the duties of her position. The better your portrait, the better your rewards shall be. Do you understand?”